Lycopodium or silicea

Hmmm...interesting situation. I might offer a few thoughts about what has happened - not in any particular order or aiming to prove any specific point. I suppose the point of this might be to show you how complex proper homoeopathic treatment can be. I do think you have a right to be upset by how things have gone though.

"Almost 2 years prior, I was placed on lycopodium 200c 3 times a day. After reading about lycopodium, I was convinced it was the correct remedy. Initially (for perhaps 1-2 weeks), I felt good. But after, I began to show virtually all the unpleasant proving/aggravation symptoms."

This is a significant overdosing with the remedy. I assume that was anywhere between 20-40 doses of a 200c. What is interesting is that you felt better at all with so much of the remedy being given. What is also very strange is that you got the aggravation after 1-2 weeks, then stayed on the remedy for another 3 months - what happened to the aggravation/proving symptoms? Did they just vanish despite being continually dosed with the remedy? I have never seen this happen before.

First thing about this, is it is not 'classical' prescribing to give so many doses, especially at such a high potency. It breaks the Law of the Minimum Dose. It also doesn't make a lot of sense to me - improvement doesn't require so much of the remedy, and anyone sensitive enough to a remedy to be genuinely cured/improved by it, will also be quite sensitive to it and cannot take too much of it. You must have had hundreds of doses!

This does sound a lot like palliation, but without being able to properly follow the exact details of the case, it is hard to really judge what happened here.

Genuinely curative remedies, by definition, do not need to be given very often. I have seen single doses of deep-acting medicines last months, even years, without any need for further dosing.

The reason we don't keep giving dose after dose (apart from the risk of excessive aggravation and side effects) is that we are trying to stimulate the Secondary Reaction by the vital force to the Primary Action of the remedy. If you keep dosing, you keep creating only the primary reaction and block the proper (curative) secondary action. Sometimes it doesn't block it, but it can keep someone in the first stage for a long time, without allowing them to progress to stages 2-4.

What would be useful here is to be able to see the case the homoeopath took, so we can examine the Direction of Cure. This is the principle that helps us to sort out complex cases and reactions to remedies, especially where the reaction appears unexpected.

"She felt I fit the silicea personality type and placed me on silicea 200c one dose every 2 weeks."

This is again a breach of the principle of Minimum dose. You don't mechanically give doses without assessment. What should be done is a single dose given, then reassessed after 2 weeks. If there is aggravation, you would wait until it was over and look for signs of improvement. If there is no improvement, you would consider changing the remedy, although you might also change the potency if convinced strongly enough that the remedy is suitable (might be too low or too high).

"After starting silicea, I felt unwell - a bit of cramping in the abdomen and fatigue. Initially I snuck in a dose of lycopodium 200c when I felt particularly unwell."

This would have certainly antidoted or interacted with the Silicea considering your sensitivity to it. At the very least it makes it hard to know what remedy is doing what. Although I disagree with how this homoeopath proceeded, I would probably ask you to stop self-prescribing as well to keep the situation clear and easy to assess.

However, as for my disagreeing with how this person proceeded:

"Anyway, on silicea 200c, once every 2 weeks, I developed a fever with a boil on my shoulder about 2 months in to the treatment. I was also craving milk and ice cream. The homeopath felt I was detoxing and suggested I switch to silicea 12c once weekly."

Again, it doesn't not appear you were not under the care of a classical homoeopath. Firstly, there is no such thing as 'detoxing' in homoeopathy. This is a naturopathic/allopathic term.

What CAN happen is that in order to relieve the internal pressure of the vital imbalance, sometimes the body uses the natural excretory systems. You might see improvement while the patient gets a profuse nasal discharge, or a nosebleed, or diarrhoea, as examples. There is no toxin being eliminated - the body is creating acute symptoms while it rebalances itself. What the vital force is doing is moving the vent from where it is currently, to somewhere safer and more appropriate. Symptoms are always just a vent for the inner disturbance (disease).

I suppose people might fall back on that term instead of explaining it properly. However, it is a traditional allopathic term, and encourages bad behaviour in practitioners ie. keeping the 'detoxing' going despite lack of improvement or even worsening on higher/more important levels.

You also cannot practice homoeopathy successfully with such disregard for Minimum Dose. Dosage is as important for achieving cure as Single Remedy and Similarity is. You seem to have been the victim of pretty faulty case management.

I can see you have tried to be a good patient, and follow the instructions you were given. I am not surprised you are so disillusioned. You have unfortunately ended up in the hands of people who are not very good homoeopaths. This is a terrible shame and always irritates me to see it happen.

"There is a lot of conviction I believe among homeopathy that when things are good, the remedy is working and when things are bad, the remedy is working better. "

This isn't really how we see it, although I imagine sometimes patients might think this, and especially if they have been at the mercy of careless practitioners.

Cure with a homoeopathic remedy should follow this process:

1. Remedy is selected on the basis of similarity to the most important and peculiar parts of the case.

2. Remedy is given in the potency most appropriate to the situation, the vitality of the patient, the extent of pathology (tissue changes), and the sensitivity of the patient.

3. Remedy is given according to the law of the minimum dose - just enough to instigate the change. Our medicines produce a kind of 'cascade' effect, work like catalysts. They start a process of change, and you only want to make sure it starts and continues to the end. Doing more than this (overdosing) actually creates more problems than the patient may have started with, including making them incurable (potentially).

Single doses of C potencies at 200c or above are best, until you can ascertain what an individual patient needs. I rarely see people need much of the correct remedy - a few doses over many months if it is a good remedy for them.

4. Watch and wait after the initial dose (or doses) are given. Allow for the initial homoeopathic aggravation which MUST occur if you are going to see any cure happen, and especially if you want the improvement to be stable and last. Aggravation is actually the symptoms produced by the remedy (what we call the 'artificial disease'), which if selected properly, will resemble your own symptoms to a large degree,although perhaps not perfectly.

Also watch for a 'healing crisis' to occur. This is the Secondary reaction to the remedy's primary action - where the vital force pushes back against the remedy symptoms to create an opposite effect cancelling out the original symptoms. When this happens, various conditions and sets of symptoms found in specific bodily locations will suddenly flare up, as the vital force attempts to cure them. This isn't a direct result of the medicine, but is a result of the vital force suddenly 'remembering' how to achieve good health.

A healing crisis is usually what we call a 'return of old symptoms', since it is something that has been left behind and uncured, but becomes the target of a more active healthy vital force trying to fix it. This could happen anytime after the remedy - it might be weeks or even months later.

5. Once the aggravation is over, examine the case to see if and how things have changed. Look at these changes in terms of Direction of Cure (things move from inside out, from top to bottom, from more important to less important, from new to old symptoms). Look at these changes in terms of the hierarchy of symptoms, to see how close the remedy is working to the vital energy itself rather than at the periphery of the case (Energy->Sensation->Delusion->Emotion->General->Local->Pathological).

Hierarchy is really important for understanding what kind of medicine you have actually ended up prescribing. It is common for people to believe that a remedy working on the Emotional level is deep acting, when in fact this is only the 4th level. Not shallow, but not deep. The further down you shift things, the more likely you will get stable, long-lasting cure that does not require constant dosing or management.

A healing crisis may need to be left alone, or it may need further help to be resolved. Often this means a completely different remedy. A healing crisis allowed to go on and on without intervention may mean the patient never overcomes it. The vital force will ask for help by displaying new symptoms, or a new shade of the old symptoms, and if ignored it will simply go back to the old state of ill health unchanged.


6. If the remedy has been seen to have been beneficial, you examine signs in the case for ongoing improvement, relapse, or a lack of movement.

Relapse is usually a call for repeat of the remedy, and then a change in potency if it continues. It may also call for a change of remedy should these measures fail. Relapse can happen because of something the patient does or is doing (using other medicines, exposing themselves to a harmful situation, suppressing symptoms thrown up by the initial medicine etc). Why it happens will often determine how you react to it.

Lack of further improvement (case is 'stuck') always calls for full reassessment. Check the hierarchy, check direction of cure, check behaviour of the patient. Often the case has changed in some way, symptoms are pointing to a new remedy, some old state has reasserted itself. Good homoeopathic cure tends to move people backwards through their disease, and this means you may have to deal with old things that have disappeared, but reappear on the remedy to be finally resolved.

If the reaction has been beneficial and improvement is ongoing (even if gradual) you would continue waiting, looking for any of the above signs, and most importantly a distinct change in state (represented by a change in the quality or nature of the symptoms).

Management of a case is all about knowing when to act, as well as knowing how to act. It is a balancing act - keeping things moving without rushing them, respecting the vital energy's own intelligent method while being ready to offering help when it calls for it.

It looks to me like your last two homoeopaths didn't know how to do this. It's a shame because we have clear guidelines on how to do it, and although clinical experience makes it easier with less mistakes, they exist to guide us through these kinds of strange and difficult cases.

You are probably right about them panicking - I see that in students as well when they first enter student clinic. It is a sign of a novice homoeopath, and unfortunately some people never seem to move past this stage.

" The homeopath asked that i take lac humanum 30c once daily for 3 days, then once weekly. Meanwhile, u was to stop silicea.

For the next 2 weeks, I had loose stools and was very emotionally volatile. If even the most minor incident occurred that was not to my liking. I would fixate on it. I could t clear my mind at all. I started taking digestive enzymes due to my weight loss. And then, suddenly, I felt fine. Not only did my strength return, but things were suddenly easy for me. I noticed several gray hairs with dark black roots. I started thinking to myself that there was nothi wrong with me.

The homeopath asked that I continue lac humanum 30c and also take gaertner 30c."

"After 6 weeks of this remedy, I was instructed to take silicea again, this time 1m once a month."


So here, you can see the homoeopath has breached both Minimum Dose and Single remedy, and what appeared to be good result was ruined. This is poor practice and you the patient suffers for it. This has happened all throughout your case - whether these remedy choices were good or bad, they were ruined by extremely poor case management.

If one or both had just been better trained, had handled your case with care and followed the basic principles we are meant to practice by, things might have gone differently for you.
[message edited by Evocationer on Mon, 08 Dec 2014 04:10:42 GMT]

In terms of the Lycopodium, it is clear from your description of the reaction that this is a 'partial similar'. Part of the case is being untouched though, and this is a serious problem. Anything left uncured will grow, until previous partial similars become ineffective. How long this might take is unknown, but it is inevitable with time.

It might be because the Miasm (underlying chronic pattern) is not being addressed. That is a very common reason for this kind of reaction. Miasm is a hard thing to discern - you need either to have a really good grasp of the principles behind miasmatic prescribing, or you need to get to know the various ups and downs of the patient's disease by observing them over a period of time.

Lac humanum sounds like it was a better choice, but ruined by overdosing.

"I'm truly at my wits end with homeopathy. I can tell it does something, but the last 2 years of up and down with treatment having been trying. I can't see myself seeing a 3rd homeopath and starting over. Why must classical homeopathy force the patient to fit their theory instead of accepting the complexity of these clinical situations"

This isn't classical homoeopathy. Unfortunately for you. Just following some of the principles is not enough. You have to follow them all. Proper classical homoeopathy doesn't force a patient to do anything, we respect and follow the pace and blueprint for cure the patient shows us. A lot of people trying to practice just don't get it.

Even though I am a classical homoeopath, I went through a similar process of working with ill-trained homoeopaths for my own health problems. Under the care of THREE of those, I deteriorated to the point where I was in hospital dying. Only by finally finding a properly trained classical homoeopath who did EVERYTHING I mentioned in my last post was I saved. There were SIX previous homoeopaths, all claiming 'proper' qualifications. This is the seventh one, and she has been wonderful. Clear in her philosophy, patient with the remedies, alert to changes, able to react appropriately...I shouldn't have to say this, but I count myself LUCKY to have met her.

I think the key is to be as educated as you can be about homoeopathy. A lot of people just assume because someone calls themselves 'classical' they are ... but like any salesmen what they offer you and what you get can be vastly different. You have to know how to judge the quality of what you are getting.

I think you were being discerning to some degree, but were being lead to believe that you were getting a certain standard of homoeopathic treatment when you were not. You obviously could tell there was something wrong, but they kept talking you into believing otherwise. I see this strategy way too often! You have to know what you should be getting, and then challenge practitioners when they won't provide it.

To be fair, practitioners are also able to display some creativity in their prescribing, and not every patient needs the same thing, so we sometimes need to do the unexpected. However, working from the basic principles is a good way to start, so you can tell quickly if you are in the hands of what we call a 'pseudohomoeopath' (someone who pays lip service to the principles without actually following them).

I think doing homoeopathy in person is always the better option, assuming you are seeing someone with the skills and experience (and training) to do that properly.

I could take your case here, although there are certain difficulties associated with working just through forum posts. You can have a look at the cases I am managing if you like by clicking on my name, to see if you want to work with me here.

I concur. Wait and see what happens, and then we can reassess.